Prix des muses 2012: Special Jury Prize

Henry Du Mont was one of the greatest masters of music at the end of the seventeenth century, along with Buxtehude, Purcell and Lully. Laurence Decobert’s work, the first biography of the artist published in more than a century, sheds new light on the output and personality of the master. In an alert, lively and well-documented account, the author highlights the life of the courtier and examines for the first time all the musical genres approached by the composer, with a particular focus on his sources of inspiration. An exhaustive chronological list of the works completes the book.

Best known today for his masses sung in most of the churches of France until Vatican II, Henry Du Mont was illustrious in the seventeenth century, in Paris and well beyond the borders of the kingdom, for his talents as an organist and harpsichordist, and as sous-maître in the Chapelle du Roi. For twenty years, he conducted the Musique de la Chapelle of Louis XIV, while at the same time, Lully reigned over that of the Chambre. Originally from the region of Liège, the composer left a considerable body of work, covering all genres except theatre music, that has come down to us thanks to the exceptional editorial distribution of the printer Ballard. A great admirer of Italian music, he helped to introduce such emblematic genres as the solo motet, sacred dialogues and motets for small vocal groups with violins to France. Thanks to his duties at the Court, he was also one of the main founders of the motets for large choir, an essential genre of French religious music, which he conceived with the still limited vocal and instrumental means of the 1660s and 1670s.

Laurence Decobert, doctor in musicology, researcher at the Institute for Research on Musical Heritage in France, is a curator in the Music Department of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. A specialist in French religious music of the seventeenth century, she has published numerous articles on Henry Du Mont and several volumes of his works with the Centre de musique baroque de Versailles.